Daily Archives: May 16, 2024

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 2.10 “The Monster: Part One”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee and several other services!

Scottie returns!  Unfortunately, he’s a drunk now.

Episode 2.10 “The Monster: Part One”

(Dir by Victor French, originally aired on December 4th, 1985)

It’s another week and another visit to a small town for Jonathan and Mark.

This time, Mark thinks that they are only in town to visit his cousin, Diane (Margie Impert), and her husband, Scottie (James Troesch), the quadriplegic attorney who appeared in a few episodes during the first season.  Mark tells Jonathan that, when he last spoke to Diane, she said that she had something important to talk to him about.  Mark assumes that Diane is pregnant but actually, it turns out that Diane and Scottie’s marriage is in trouble.  Scottie may be an attorney but he has no clients and Diane has gone back to work to help pay the bills.  Feeling like a failure, Scottie has taken to drinking.

While Mark deals with Diane and Scottie, Jonathan has an assignment.  He working as a handyman for Ella McCullough (Barbara Townsend) and her blind daughter, Rachel (Annabella Price).  At first, Rachel is bitter and stand-offish but Jonathan wins her over by encouraging her to leave her little cottage and explore the world.  While relaxing at a nearby creek, Rachel meets a man (Jeff Kober) who is out for a walk.  Rachel tells the man that he startled her and then mentions that the neighborhood kids talk about a monster named Julian.  Julian lives in the woods and drags off bad kids.

“My name’s Clark,” the man lies.

Actually, the man’s name is Julian but you can understand why he might not want to admit that after listening to Rachel describe him as being a monster.  Julian is not a monster, of course.  He’s a sensitive sculptor who just happens to have a very large birthmark covering half of his face and neck.  Having been ridiculed all of his life, Julian lives with his mom (Ann Doran) and rarely talks to anyone.  Still, Julian falls in love with Rachel and Rachel falls in love with …. Clark.

Julian finally finds the strength to visit Rachel at her cottage.  However, when she tells him that she will be having an operation to resort her sight, Clark yells that he’s Julian and then he runs back into the woods.  Rachel chases after him.  When she trips and hits her head on a rock, Julian runs over to her and tries to help.  Unfortunately, that’s when the police arrives and promptly arrest Julian for assault.

Julian’s going to court!  Hey, does anyone know an attorney who needs a shot of confidence and who has a unique understanding of what it’s like to be an outsider?  We’ll find out next week because this is a two-part episode!

Reviewing a two-parter is always difficult.  Tonight’s episode ends with the story nowhere close to being finished.  I can’t judge the overall story but I can say that Jeff Kober gave a touching performance as Julian and he was the best thing about the first part of The Monster.  As for Scottie, he needs to stop blaming everyone else for his own lack of confidence.  Hopefully, that’s a lesson he’ll learn during the second part of this episode.

We’ll find out next week!

The Films of 2024: The Painter (dir by Kimani Ray Smith)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Painter tells the rather predictable story of Peter.

Orphaned by a terrorist attack when he was a child, Peter (Charlie Webber) was raised by a CIA agent named Byrne (Jon Voight).  Realizing that the attack had left Peter with superhearing, Byrne raised Peter to be a CIA assassin.  But after a failed mission led to the shooting his pregnant wife, Elena (Rryla McIntosh), an embittered Peter retired from the agency.  Now, going by the name of Mark, he paints!

Why do retired CIA agents always end up living in a cabin and obsessively pursuing only one hobby?  This feels like the 100th film that I’ve seen about a former assassin living in a cabin.  Some retired agents keep bees.  Some become bricklayers.  Some become painters.  Oddly, none of them seem to become both bricklayers and painters.

Anyway, Peter is happy with his isolated life but then, everything is upended when a 17 year-old girl named Sophia (Madison Bailey) follows him to his cabin and claims to be his daughter.  She says that Elena has vanished and she needs Peter’s help to find her.  Peter insists that his name is Mark until his superhearing picks up the sound of heavily armed men gathering outside of his cabin.

This is another one of those action films where the main character is someone who kills without the slightest hesitation and who has trouble showing his emotions.  Naturally, there’s a conspiracy inside the CIA and this leads to several scenes of people saying stuff like, “Copy that.”  The only fictional character who ever sounded cool saying, “Copy that,” was Kiefer Sutherland on 24.  All the rest of these people are just pretenders.

The Painter is pretty stupid.  It won’t take you long to guess who the main villain is going to turn out to be and it also won’t take you long to guess how the final showdown is going to go.  The action scenes are so haphazardly edited that it’s difficult to keep track of who is actually fighting who and, even if you did know who was fighting who, you wouldn’t really care because none of these people are particularly compelling.

In general, if your main character is going to be remorseless killer, it’s a good idea to cast a charismatic actor in the lead role.  Audiences will forgive a lot as long as their watching someone with a compelling screen presence.  Unfortunately, both Charlie Webber and Madison Bailey give rather bland performances and neither Peter nor Sophia are particularly likable characters.  In particular, Peter drags one innocent computer store owner into his mess and then doesn’t seem to be particularly upset when the poor guy ends up with a bullet in his brain.  It’s one thing to be an assassin.  It’s another thing to be a jerk about it.

On the plus side, Jon Voight is enough of an old pro to understand that this is a movie that does not reward subtlety and he gives a performance that is totally over-the-top but which is also more than appropriate for the material with which he’s working.  (Voight is still a talented actor and it’s a shame that, due to voting for different candidates than the majority of Hollywood, he’s pretty much going to end his career appearing in movies like this.)  As well, Max Montesi gives such a cheerfully bizarre performance as a rival assassin that he actually bring the movie to life whenever he’s on the screen.

Unfortunately, the lunacy of Voight and Montesi is not enough to save The Painter.  At one point, someone dismisses Peter’s paintings as being “derivative.”  They could have been talking about this film as a whole.

Gunning For Vengeance (1946, directed by Ray Nazarro)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Steve Landry (Charles Starrett) rides into another town and is once again named the new sheriff.  Luckily, Steve’s old friend Smiley Burnette is working as the town’s blacksmith.  Steve makes Smiley his deputy and then sets about trying to break up a gang of cattle rustlers.  When Steve learns that his jurisdiction does not extend beyond the city limits, he dons the disguise of his alter ego, The Durango Kid, to go after the outlaws.

Has Steve met his match in Belle (Phyllis Adair), the saloon owner who is the secret leader of the outlaws?  She notices that The Durango Kid’s boot tracks are the same as Steve’s boot tracks.  I’m surprised that no one has ever noticed that before.  Steve went through a lot of trouble to disguise himself as Durango but he never bothered to change his boots.

This entry in the Durango Kid series features a lot of Smiley Burnette so your enjoyment on the film will depend on how much tolerance you have for Smiley’s songs and his style of humor.  Each film featured Smiley being followed around by a different group of musicians.  In this one, Smiley is accompanied by The Trailsman.  When Smiley accidentally locks himself in a jail cell, the Trailsman stand on the other side of the bars and sing a song about how Smiley can’t get out of the cell.  Smiley does eventually get out but, later on, he’s knocked out cold during an attempted jail break.  Smiley’s not much of a help in this one.

This has all of the typical Durango Kid elements, including the stock footage of the stampeding cattle that appeared in nearly all of his films.  There’s another saloon fight and a gunfight towards the end.  Durango rides out of town alone, leaving Smiley behind, but we know they’ll soon be reunited in another adventure.

Retro Television Review: Malibu, CA 1.3 “Miss Malibu”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Malibu CA, which aired in Syndication in 1998 and 1999.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

I was warned about this episode.

Episode 1.3 “Miss Malibu”

(Dir by Gary Shimokawa, originally aired on October 25th, 1998)

Wow, check out these two douchebags!

On the left, we’ve got Scott, who is supposed to be the studious brother.  On the right, we’ve got Jason, who is supposed to be the cool brother.  It can be difficult to keep the two of them straight, even though they don’t really resemble each other physically.  The problem is that neither really has much of a personality, beyond taking off their shirt and staring at girls.

Their father is going to convention in Las Vegas so he leaves the twins in charge of the restaurant.  Why would he do that?  We’re only three episodes in Malibu, CA but every episode so far has featured these two idiots doing something stupid with the restaurant.  Does the restaurant not have an assistant manager who could run the place?

Before leaving, their father tells Scott and Jason to be sure to feed the fish in the restaurant’s aquarium.  Dumbass Scott (or maybe it was Jason) is so distracted by Samantha and her friends that he accidentally dumps a bunch of bacon bits into the aquarium and kills a goldfish.  Scott and Jason assume that they’ve killed their father’s favorite fish, Goldie.  They’re worried that their father is going to be mad at them.  Personally, I think they should think about the fact that they killed an animal that was depending on them to do the bare minimum to keep it alive.

Maybe they can buy a new fish!  The only problem is that the goldfish was an extremely rare breed and it will cost them $500 to get a new one.  How can they raise $500?  Maybe they should take it out of the restaurant’s cash registers.  Maybe they should pawn some of their expensive belongings.  Maybe they should ask their rich friend Murray for a loan.  Maybe they should just tell their Dad the truth because, sadly, fish do die.  They can leave out the fact that they murdered the fish, if they want.

Instead of doing any of that, they decide to throw a fake beauty contest.

WHAT!?

They’ll charge every one an entry free and advertise the contest as coming with a $500 prize.  But, since Jason, Scott, and Murray will be the judges, they’ll just announce that Sam is the winner and then Sam will give them back the prize.  Seriously, this is the plan they come up with.  Out of everything that they could have done, this is what they do.

Here’s why this is a dumb plan.  To let people know about the fake Miss Malibu contest, they have to print up signs.  They have to find time to hang up the signs around town.  They have to print up entry forms.  In fact, if they’re going to get enough people to enter to raise $500, they’re going to have to print up and copy a lot of entry forms.  They’re going to have to rent out a spot on the beach to hold the contest.  They’re going to have to install a lighting and sound system for the pageant.  It’s going to cost them way more than just $500 to hold a fake beauty contest.  If they have $500 for this, why don’t they have $500 for a new fish?

Sam is reluctant to go along with the plan so Scott and Jason, as if they weren’t already unlikable enough, lie to her and tell her that their father is a recovering alcoholic and losing the fish will cause him to start drinking and driving again.  Seriously, what the Hell?  Sam agrees to enter the pageant but then the plan hits another snag when Sam has an allergic reaction to her tanning lotion and her face turns orange.  Jason and Scott decide to asks Stads to enter as their ringer.  When Stads says she doesn’t like the way beauty pageants demean women, Scott removes his shirt and shows off his muscles until Stads agrees to help.  Wow, Scott — way to take advantage of the fact that a really nice person has a crush on you.  WHAT A DOUCHEBAG!

Anyway, I feel like I’ve already wasted too much time on this so I’ll cut to the chase.  The pageant does not raise enough money to pay for the new fish but Stads once again demeans herself and pretends to be Jason and Scott’s younger sister when she asks the fish salesman to give them the replacement fish at a lower price.  (Does Stads have any self-respect?)  Scott and Jason put the new fish in the aquarium but then it turns out that Goldie wasn’t the fish that died.  Instead, Goldie is a big gray fish that their father named after Goldie Hawn.

Wow, funny.

You may have guessed I did not care much for this episode.  The main problem is that Jason and Scott are so incredibly unlikable that it’s impossible to root for them.  They did the wrong thing, they exploited their friends, and they didn’t even really seem to appreciate the fact that Stads abandoned her principles to help them out.  Zach Morris and even California Dreams’s Sly Winkle would have at least felt a smidgen of guilt.  But Jason and Scott are just jerks.

Ugh, what a terrible 23-minute viewing experience!

Will next week be better?  Probably not.

The Covers of Battle Cry

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Published by Stanley Publications, Battle Cry ran from 1955 to 1971.  The magazine was advertised as being “for men” and each issue featured stories and features about war, dangerous women, and damsels in distress who were waiting for a good, strong man to come rescue them.  Battle Cry also featured some of the most violent covers around, usually emphasizing manly soldiers battling America’s enemies and saving women in danger though there was also a large number of covers that featured evil women (usually wearing a swastika armband) whipping bound men.

Below is a sampling of the covers of Battle Cry.  Most people would probably consider the covers that I picked to be mild by the standards of Battle Cry but I still think they give a good indication of what the magazine was all about.

February 1958. By Clarence Doore

June, 1958. By Clarence Doore

February, 1959. By Victor Prezio

April, 1959. By Victor Prezio

August, 1959. Artist Unknown (though it looks like another Victor Prezio cover to me)

May, 1960. Artist Unknown.

December, 1963. By Bruce Minney

December, 1965. By Victor Prezio

August, 1966. Artist Unknown

June, 1968. By Clarence Doore

Scenes That I Love: Henry Fonda in The Ox-Bow Incident

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, we celebrate the birthday of Henry Fonda!

Fonda was born 119 years ago today and, over the course of his long career, he was often cast in role the epitomized everything great about America.  It’s rare to find a Henry Fonda film in which he played an out-and-out villain, though he did just that in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West.  (Leone, in fact, cast Fonda as the evil Frank because he knew audiences would be shocked to see Fonda coldly gunning down settlers and their families.)

One of Fonda’s finest films was 1943’s The Ox-Bow Incident, in which he played a cowboy who finds himself drafted into joining a posse that ends up hanging three men for the crime of murder and cattle rustling.  The members of the posse (including seven of whom voted against hanging the men) later learn that the men were innocent.  In today’s scene that I love, Henry Fonda reads aloud the letter that one of the men wrote to his wife shortly before he was hung.  This was one of Fonda’s most heartfelt and powerful performances.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Danny Trejo Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, the Shattered Len wishes a happy 80th birthday to the man and the legend, Danny Trejo!  Trejo’s journey from being a gang member to an ex-con to a drug counselor to a pop cultural institution is an inspiring one, all the more so because Danny Trejo is so candid about both his past struggles and his present successes.  

It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Danny Trejo Films

Runaway Train (1985, dir by Andrei Konchalovsky, DP: Alan Hume)

Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987, dir by J. Lee Thompson, DP: Gideon Porath)

Heat (1995, dir by Michael Mann, DP: Dante Spinotti)

Machete Kills (2013, dir by Robert Rodriguez, DP: Robert Rodriguez)

Music Video of the Day: Hall of the Mountain King by Savatage (1995, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This video was filmed in Japan during the band’s 1994 tour.

Though the band has been through many personnel changes over the years, Savatage is still recording and touring and it is still led by Jon Oliva, who founded the band in 1978 with his brother Criss.  The band was originally called Avatar until the brothers learned that there were already several other bands with that name.  Criss was tragically killed in a 1993 car accident and Jon has kept the band going in his memory.

Enjoy!